American companies say protectionist policies keep them out. The reality is more complicated.

The last time Shujiro Urata wanted to buy a new car in Japan, his phone happened to ring. It was the local Toyota dealer on the phone, asking him if he was thinking about buying a new car. When he replied in the affirmative, the dealer and a coworker showed up at Urata’s doorstep an hour later with two demo cars, which Urata and his wife test-drove around the neighborhood. The Uratas decided to buy a car from the dealer. The dealer also handles their car insurance, coming to their home whenever the insurance contract needed to be renewed. The Uratas bring in their car to the dealer every few weeks for a free car wash, where they hang out and talk to the employees, who have become their friends, about dog breeds and family birthdays.

The rapport may sound unusual to Americans, who are about as happy to voluntarily go to a car dealer as they are to get teeth pulled, but the relationship between customer and car dealer is a common one in Japan.

...I visited a new BMW dealership in Tokyo to find out why European carmakers are doing better in Japan than U.S. automakers. The newly opened dealership is located in Tokyo Bay, near a planned 2020 Olympic park, and is 27,000 square meters. Walk into the dealership and you’ll encounter a separate coffee shop run by Nescafé where anyone, not just people interested in cars, can sit down at the many tables and order specialty coffee drinks and desserts from waiters. There are sleek cars and bicycles in a vast showroom, while another showroom sells car accessories and BMW memorabilia. The brand holds events on weekends, inviting children to come and play with remote-control cars on a track. “In Japan, everything is about hospitality,” Peter Kronschnabl, the CEO of BMW Group Japan and the chairperson of the European Business Council’s Automotive Committee and the Japan Automobile Importers Association, told me. “If you are not into this, it will be very difficult to succeed in the Japanese market.”

...Japanese brands account for about 90 percent of the domestic auto market in Japan, according to the Japanese Automobile Dealers Association. In the United States, by contrast, domestic brands have a much smaller share of the market. The Big Three—General Motors, Ford, and Fiat Chrysler—make up 45 percent of the market, while Japanese brands make up 39 percent, according to auto-sales data from The Wall Street Journal.